This is a review of the Anquet Outdoor Map Navigator apps for PC and Android.

Digital mapping apps have become pretty commonplace over recent years, with many really good options available. Those of us in Britain are blessed with some pretty awesome mapping by our national mapping agency, the Ordnance Survey. However, the high cost of licensing meant that, for a while, there were only limited options for viewing these digitally. With the development of mobile phones, smartwatches and personal satellite beacons/messengers, companies have had to accept that users are no longer all using the same few handheld GPS units. Additionally, users are increasingly wanting to view, plan and share GPS data across different platforms. Furthermore, viewing digital maps on a phone raises the issue of patchy signal reception and reliability. Needless to say, the market for digital mapping is now pretty competitive and evolving.

Navigation is a fundamental outdoor skill and to that end, I have used this app extensively for personal and guided hiking in Scotland. It’s best not to have to rely on a smartphone for this, but, frankly, this method of navigation is here to stay.

Having tried a few solutions, I have found Anquet OMN to fulfil alot of what I need from a digital mapping app for use in the UK. This review of Anquet OMN is written from the point of an active user, as opposed to a detailed technical rundown. At time of writing, the app version is 3.0.104 (check the current version for updates).

Why Anquet OMN?

I first started using Anquet OMN (Outdoor Map Navigator) about two years ago. It is marketed with the phrase ‘one subscription, four apps’. This was certainly attractive for me, because I wanted something that would work on a phone in a blizzard, but also on my laptop and any other device I might own in the future.

Offline mapping was also vital, because I would need to use it for planning at home, in a tent or snowhole, or briefing clients in a hotel/boat/coffeeshop/van. This is especially important in my work leading guided activities in the Highlands of Scotland. In these situations, it’s really important that the whole group appreciates the type of terrain they are about to enter, so a safe plan can be agreed.

Outdoor Map Navigator Interface

A recent overhaul of the UI has simplified the Android app main menu a bit, which is welcome. Certainly, the menu and functions are comprehensive, but in terms of appearance and usability, I find it a bit behind the likes of Viewranger, for example. The PC main screen is really uncluttered and has a well thought-out menu. Unfortunately, pinch-to-zoom doesn’t work on a Microsoft Surface Pro 6, so you need to use the wee slider at top right (or mouse scroll wheel) .

Nevertheless, all the functions are there, it just takes a little while to get your head round them.

Performance

Android app

While preparing this review of Anquet OMN, the performance of the phone app seemed to me to be one of the most important factors to consider. In my experience, using an old Samsung Galaxy S8, it has generally been fine. True, if you have tracking on all day, recording markers every 5 metres and/or 30 seconds, then drain on memory and battery will be pretty high. However, it is pretty easy in the app to adjust track recording settings. Also, it’s the phone screen which can be a major draw on battery, so keeping a lid on the screen settings helps alot.

Compared to my Garmin, I find the app gets going pretty quick. I think part of this is down to my saved routes, tracks and waypoints being stored separately in the cloud and updated as needed. This is compared to a standalone old offline Garmin GPS which is loading absolutely everything fresh each time.

Day-long tracking

I rarely track myself for an entire day, unless I’m really keen on measuring performance. In any case, day-long tracking on a mobile phone depends alot on the phone’s data, battery, memory, etc. However, I have used Anquet OMN for this and it has worked fine. Another reason I might save a long track is to share it with guests at the end of the day. This can provide a great learning opportunity, but it can work just as well by just tracking the segments of the journey you are interested in. But to be honest, if I am intending to track all day, I might consider using my trusty Garmin Montana GPS, which has far less battery drain and means my phone can stay fresh for emergencies.

On the few occassions the phone app has crashed on the hill, I have found I can close it and immediately restart it and it has actually picked up tracking pretty much where it left off.

Whitelisting

I did have one issue early on where the app wasn’t apparently tracking at all, or was missing out big sections of a route. In my case, the solution was down to ‘whitelisting’ the app in the Samsung Galaxy settings (see below). This is a pretty straightforward fix, detailed helpfully within the Anquet app help section itself. It effectively stops the phone switching off tracking when the screen times out. Problem fixed.

PC app

In regards to the desktop app, it’s usually performed pretty smoothly. There are the usual setup steps of downloading map tiles that you want to use. If you arrive in a new area and you havent saved map tiles offline, then they will be queued for download, which may slow things down a bit, depending on wifi/phone signal. However, the Anquet team say that the recent app overhaul has actually made this process alot slicker, which certainly seems to be the case.

I have had the PC app refuse to start on a few occassions. But there have usually been a range of other memory-intensive apps running at the same time, so I’ll overlook that for now.

Anquet OMN: Review of the main features

The phone and desktop apps have most of the features you would expect from a modern digital mapping app. Below is a rough overview:

• Management and creation of waypoints, tracks and routes
• Fine control of the map screen and markers, data fields, etc
• Library of different maps
• Touch-enabled pan/zoom control
• Location search by name, grid reference (Uk National grid, Lat/Long or UTM)

Waypoint, route and track management

In both the phone and desktop apps, this feature is pretty comprehensive, if a little unintuitive. I find the way the data is displayed to be pretty basic, but it gets the job done. If you are keen on organising your various tracks, etc in different folders then you will be in heaven. Plus, its all saved to Anquets cloud, so it is instantly available in any of their apps you are signed into, on any device. Once the data is synced, it’s available on the device offline.

The route creation tool is pretty good, although you have to tap ‘Edit mode’ to get the extended handles when editing a routepoint. This feature is ace because it makes it possible to position routepoints really accurately with your finger.

You have full control over line style and colour and icons, which is good to see. Also nifty is the ability to set a transparent line colour, which enables you to still see map features below.

Printing maps

One of the main reasons for subscribing to digital mapping is so you can print off your own maps and not have to buy, carry and replace piles of shop-bought maps.

Anquet has this covered, but it also has a key feature here which really was a deciding factor for me. Firstly, you can print off, say, a 1:50,000 scale OS map and trust that 2mm on the map equals 100m on the ground (as long as your printer is playing ball). But, crucially, you can also print off that same 1:50,000 scale map at 1:25,000 scale.

It may seem like a small thing, but it’s a gamechanger for ski touring and winter mountaineering. It means that you get the easy-to read cartography of a 50,000 scale map, but accurately magnified 2x. In really atrocious weather, when you can barely see anything, you cerainly dont want to be messing with a 1:25,000 scale map because there’s too much detail. And although the standard 1:50,000 scale maps are much better in that regard, their contour detail can still be hard to make out in steep areas. But in the Anquet system, everything can be magnified by a simple factor of 2, making fine contour interpretation much easier, whilst still keeping the maths simple. This is so important for avalanche safety, it can’t be overstated. Plus, if you’re in your 40’s and facing the issue of deteriorating close vision, then this option really is lifechanging!

Navigating with OMN

The main map screen is well laid out and all the main functions are quick and easy to access, without being obtrusive. The top bar has a single row of data fields and an optional second row.

As you delve into the various settings screens, you find a good range of options for GPS data, profiles and the GPS marker, for example. You can also see the whitelisting button on the last screen below.

When writing this review, I realised that there’s one big feature missing from Anquet OMN that needs to be addressed. And that’s routing or navigation guidance. By design, if you want to follow a saved route or go to a saved waypoint, you will need to navigate yourself there without the device telling you when to turn or how far away the destination is. This might be a dealbreaker for some, and I understand from a support conversation that this is something they might bring at a later point in some form. However, I would suggest that it is not a biggie if you are already comfortable reading maps and navigating.

Digital mapping without guidance

Essentially, it is putting the navigation in your hands, as opposed to the device telling you what to do. The phone will display your position data accurately and that of your destination, but it remains up to you to get yourself there. From a hill safety point of view, this is actually great, because the digital mapping screen keeps your brain in ‘map mode’, without being glued to just numbers and a direction arrow.

the digital mapping screen keeps your brain in ‘map mode’, without being glued to just numbers and a direction arrow.

Risks of following GPS

In many ways, this avoids one of the main risks of GPS navigation, which was users slavishly following an arrow on a screen without paying any attention to the terrain around them. This has led to people actually getting lost and injured because the device, essentially, only thinks in straight lines, regardless of slope angle, cliffs, rivers, etc. But if you plot a sensible route and just keep your location marker on it, then you’re good.

The only situations where I can see the lack of guidance being a potential problem are:

• Driving navigation
• Boat/kayak navigation
• ‘Blind’ navigation in the dark/featureless terrain/whiteout

Firstly, the OMN app wasn’t designed for the first two situations (there’s no voice guidance and the company doesn’t do marine maps). Secondly, as discussed above, leaving the actual routefinding down to the user is no bad thing from a safety point of view. This app does the main thing well, which is find and display location data.

GPS data options

There is good range of options for what data to record when creating waypoints, etc. However, the options for reviewing this data in the app are pretty limited and not stellar in the PC app. You can create one or two basic graphs, but that’s about it.

But if you like tinkering with the appearance of your waypoints and routes/tracks, then you will be delighted at the range of options available.

Sharing

If you need to share your routes, waypoints or tracks then that’s pretty easy to do. It is in the form of a standard GPX file, which should be readable by just about any device with GPS. Position sharing is pretty simple and just amounts to your grid reference in text form.

Unfortunately, there’s no bells-and-whistles ‘Buddy Beacon’ or anything like that (yet). And if you’re keen on the social side of route sharing and seeing what your friends have been doing, or viewing recommended routes, etc, then there’s just nothing like that in the Anquet system. The team seem to be working hard on making continual app updates and developing features, so maybe it will come in the future.

However, if you can live with only the basic functionality here, it does keep the app nice and simple. I often need to share my route plan for the day with my emergency contact, or share beta on snow or trail conditions with colleagues. My current workaround is to screenshot the main Anquet screen on my phone and send that via WhatsApp, maybe with finger-drawn notes on the image. If I really want to share a ski or bike route to social media, then I’ll either use a dedicated app like Strava or share the GPX file from Anquet to whatever platform I need.

Price

This review of Anquet OMN wouldnt be complete without at least a quick look at pricing. There are various subscription levels available, depending on the style/scale of OS maps you want. The subscriptions all offer full GB mapping and offline use, which is great. There is also the option to buy individual OS map regions at different scales if you aren’t going the full subscription route. Note that you need the middle-tier subscription to be able to use offline maps on the PC or MacOS apps.

Interestingly, there was the option to buy Harveys British Mountain Maps (1:40,000 scale). I have these on my account and they provide a great alternative map for guests when working on navigation. However, while writing this review, I noticed Anquet seem to have removed the option to add these to the OMN app.

Support

I have used the Anquet support forum for one or two queries over the years and they have always been quick to respond. I get the impression that the team is dedicated to building the app to be better and better. Their knowledgebase is good and they seem to respond to feedback from their tester community.

I do get the impression, however, that the app was a little long in the tooth and has had to play catch up as technology has moved on. That’s perhaps to be expected when you remember that Anquet was one of the first providers of digital OS mapping in Britain. The basics seem to work well and there seems to be a committment to their users to deliver incremental upgrades. However, the explosion in social media and interconnected GPS-equipped gadgets has undoubtedly raised the bar when it comes to digital mapping tech.

Anquet OMN review: Summary

So, lets wrap up this review of the Anquet OMN app. In my opinion, as a professional user, Anquet’s OMN is pretty good, if a bit clunky in places. It’s a good choice if you need offline OS maps and route data across multiple devices, for a reasonable price.

For users in Britain, however, it doesn’t provide Admiralty Marine charts, which may be a deal breaker for some. And there are definitely some fairly serious gripes connected with the user experience that could do with ironing out. Taking into account the comments below, these gripes include:

• the subscription system
• re-installation
• sync
• route creation

It’s probably worth the reminder that this turns your phone into a handheld GPS, so make sure your phone is up to the task regarding battery, memory, temperature extremes and waterproofing. Interested? Visit Anquet’s OMN app download page.

✅ No freebies or reimbursement were received in return for this review.